Hello, Arduino

Last September, Women Who Code Sydney ran a Learn Arduino event. I’m generally not very keen on hardware, so I hadn’t bothered to investigate Arduino in depth, but this blinking green light from the workshop was one of the most exciting things I’d seen in ages. It was programming in physical form: I’d written the code, sent it to the motherboard, plugged in the wires and resistors to control the current, then seen something in my environment that I could actually touch and change.

Arduino has been around for a while. It is a small version of a computer with very simple inputs and outputs, and that’s what makes them really fun to play with. There are lots of different input sensors you can use, like temperature sensors, movement, infrared, light.

It’s fairly inexpensive to get a basic Arduino kit, as cheap as $30 depending on where you get it from. Atlassian kindly sponsored our event and donated 20 starter kits which included the basic Arduino board, and a whole lot of extra sensors to play with.

1 x 830pt Breadboard

4 x LED

2 x RGB LED

1 x 9V Plug

1 x 9V Lead

1 x Breadboard Power Module

4 x Tactile Switch

1 x Small Slide Switch

10 x Resistors

1 x pack of jumper wires

1 x Light Dependant Resistor

1 x Small Plastic Servo

1 x Buzzer

1 x Linear Rotary Potentiometer

1 x Ultrasonic Sensor

1 x Hall Effect Sensor

1 x 7 Segment Display

1 x Temperature sensor

1 x IR phototransistor

1 x NPN transistor BC547

Our host, Natalia Galin did a phenomenal job preparing for the event, even down to these cheat sheets with components separated out and nicely labelled, which made it easy to work on our tasks.

First up was a crash-course on electronics, and how the Arduino’s breadboard circuitry works.

Then a series of programming tasks to connect up the wiring so that lights work, and using physical switches to turn lights on and off. It was addictive!

We were limited by how many kits were available, but we had around 25 people attend the workshop, and the atmosphere was great. A huge thanks goes to Google for sponsoring the venue and catering for the night, and Atlassian for the Arduino kits.